008:154 - American Regional Literatures
Literature of the American Midwest
Professor Florence Boos

We will examine a century of poetry, fiction, drama and autobiographical works set in or written by authors from the upper Midwest, and consider some ways in which their subjects and preoccupations mirrored the region’s history, culture and geography.
Writers whose works we will sample include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Susan Glaspell, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes (Missouri), Richard Wright, Fenton Johnston, Winona La Duke, Gwendolyn Brooks, Aldo Leopold, Ruth Suckow, Jane Smiley, Rita Dove and others.

As assignments, I will ask students to bring in questions for class discussion, post brief web-responses to the texts, prepare class-presentations on one or more of the course’s authors, and write two six-page critical essays, one due midway through the course and the other at the end.

Copyright © 2009 Florence Boos, The University of Iowa